10 Things I WON’T Miss About Living in China

Last week I wrote 10 things I’ll miss about living in China, so to keep it balanced I figured I should also talk about things I WON’T miss about living in China.  This post could easily be renamed, “Things in China that drive Emily Absolutely Crazy,” but that’s mostly because it’s nearing the end of the school year and I’m ready to go home!  Overall, Tommy and I agree that moving to China was 100% the right decision for us, and we’ve had an absolutely incredible year.  So please, don’t take this post as me being a Negative Nigel (I really do enjoy China) – but do keep these less-than-awesome factors in mind in case you’re considering taking the leap yourself or are simply getting a little jealous after hearing about our 13-hour workweeks!

(P.S. As I mentioned in last week’s post, if day-to-day life in China posts are of interest to you, check out these older posts: food in China, housing & toilets, Christmas in small-town China, traditional street markets, and teaching English in China.)

1. Missing out on things back home.

Thanks to the magical powers of the internet, we can video chat, call, or text our friends as often as we want!  We’re so thankful to have communication (literally) at our fingertips, but as awesome as this is, it just isn’t the same as physically being with family and friends.  Being a 16+ hour plane ride away for the past 9 months means that we’ve missed out on lots of family events and hang-outs with friends.  We love hearing about them and looking at photos, but we can’t wait to see everyone and make some memories in person this summer!

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10 Things I’ll Miss About Living in China

With about 5 weeks left in China, I’ll be doing a little more reflecting on day-to-day life in our little mountain town.  If everyday topics like this interest you, check out these earlier posts: food in China, housing & toilets, Christmas in small-town China, traditional street markets, and teaching English in China.  We’re still not sure what we’re doing next semester (sorry to those anxiously awaiting news!) but will be sure to post here as soon as we decide.

1. FREE TIME!!!

This is, without a doubt, the number one thing that I will miss about living in China.  To get just a vague idea of how much time we have off, check out Where We’ve Been – this has all been without asking for ANY vacation time.  It simply comes from a lot of national holidays and school testing days.  Even when we have a normal workweek, we aren’t actually working very many hours and have tons of free time.  I am scheduled to teach seventeen 45-minute classes per week (a total of about 13 contact hours), but these are cancelled quite frequently.  Thomas’s school is more demanding and he teaches twenty 45-minutes classes per week (about 15 contact hours) with very few cancellations.  Of course, our classes are not consecutive, so we do spend a decent bit of time sitting around the office.  Still, when you consider America’s 40-hour work weeks and lack of lengthy holidays, we are living the dream, my friends!

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Up Close and Personal Part 2: Food, food, and more food

Chinese food.  Oh man, this topic could fill a textbook.  Because China is such a huge country, there’s no simple way to summarize their food.  Over the past five months in China, we’ve gotten pretty well acquainted with regional food but still have so much to learn!    I’ll dig into what the differences are between Western Chinese food and authentic Chinese food, what we regularly eat in our province, and a bit about food throughout the rest of the country.

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Up Close and Personal Part 1: Housing and Toilets

Since we’ve had some downtime lately, I thought I’d do a little “Living in China” mini-series.  We’ve shared a lot about our travels, but not too much about the day-to-day of teaching in China.  I’ll cover topics people have asked me about in the past and anything new that comes up, so let me know if you have any burning questions!  First up, where we live and what scared me the most about moving to China: ~~toilets~~.

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Christmas in China

Merry Christmas from China!  We’ve been missing our family and friends this holiday season, but we managed to make it a little special anyways.  Other Western holidays haven’t really caught on in China, so we were pleasantly surprised to find that the Christmas cheer has spread here.  Read on to find out what Christmas is like in a small, authentic Chinese town!

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